The Demon Spawn of Coal Hill
by jerkwithaheartofgold
Summary: All Courtney Woods wants is to single-handedly get a teacher to resign from teaching forever. Is that too much to ask? A series of random bits and bobs of Courtney being her charming self at Coal Hill school, with appearances from Miss Oswald, Mr Pink and the Caretaker. (Eventually.) Spoilers for Series 8 and quite a lot of swears along the way.
1. I'm Super Keen

By the second term of Year Seven, Courtney Woods was already known to most, if not all, of the teaching staff as an infuriatingly intelligent troublemaker, who was in Wednesday detention so often she'd claimed one of the desks as her own and put the hour she spent there every week on her timetable.

Now that Courtney was entering Year Nine, she had firmly cemented her place as ' _that_ child' or, in her own words, 'the demon spawn of Coal Hill'. Every teacher, regardless of whether they had ever taught her or not, knew her name and her face. In fact, most of them could recognise her from the back at the other end of the main corridor, and that was before she opened her mouth. Courtney even had it on good report that her picture was on the wall in the staffroom under a label, 'report any incidents to Steve'. Steve, or Mr Cunningham as Courtney was _supposed_ to call him, was the head teacher at Coal Hill School. To most of the students, especially the little Year Sevens, Mr C was terrifying. Being the highest power in the school practically made him Cthulhu – the beard didn't exactly help the image–, with all the teachers being his weird little cult. However, to Courtney he was just a guy who just wanted Courtney to pass her exams and stop making the Year Sevens cry. And that didn't exactly hold any kind of gravitas with her.

Coal Hill tried almost everything they could think of: report cards, exclusions, reduced privileges. At one point they'd kept a running total of how many cautions she got each week, in the hope that seeing the apparently 'horrendous' totals would make Courtney re-evaluate her life choices. Instead, Courtney just tried to see how high a score she could get each week. And then how high she could get without swearing at any teachers. And then how high she could get without speaking unless directly addressed. And then how high she could get without saying anything at all. Mr Cunningam gave up on the idea pretty quickly.

The latest idea was to put Courtney in counselling sessions, just to make sure she didn't have any 'behavioural problems'. Courtney found this more than a bit insulting. If they'd just bothered to ask her, she could have told them that no, she didn't have trouble concentrating or managing her behaviour or understanding her feelings, she just hated school. It was that simple.

Well, it had been.

* * *

In the second week of Year 9, Courtney's English teacher, Dr Black, just up and left, leaving behind a huge stack of unmarked English controlled assessments and a truly astonishing number of tea stains on the wooden floor of his classroom for a man who'd been using the room for less than ten days. Unsurprisingly, Courtney found herself at the centre of attention, if anyone at Coal Hill could convince a teacher to leave in two weeks, it was Courtney.

But, for once, Courtney hadn't actually done anything. Her mum had threatened her with a Scottish boarding school run by scary nuns and so, for the first few weeks of Year 9 at least, Courtney was on best behaviour. So with Courtney out of the running, a whole bunch of other theories popped up. Alien abduction, affair, convict, secret assassin, debilitating crush on Mr Matthews (who could blame him?), the rumours steadily got worse and worse until some Year Eleven hit the jackpot. He'd been murdered. In the library. With a lead piping.

Courtney was pretty pissed off she hadn't thought of it. Not only was it annoyingly intelligent, it was also sensational enough that all the Year Sevens who didn't get the joke were talking about it anyway. The only problem with it was that it got so out of hand that they had to have a whole school assembly in which Mr Cunningham explained that Dr Black was in fact alive and well in Barbados and that insinuating he was dead and making light of it by likening to a game of Cluedo was 'strictly against the ethos and tenets of Coal Hill school'.

Whatever that meant.

* * *

After half a term of the world's worst substitute teachers, Courtney had all but given up on English lessons. They were quickly just becoming regular napping sessions for her and the rest of Set B. And then one Tuesday afternoon in November, having spent a week truanting and finding out that being in school and being able to piss off teachers was actually way more fun than hiding from the entire adult population of London, she strolled into her English classroom to find some sixth former she didn't recognise writing a whole list of books in cutesy cursive on the glass board thing they were using as a temporary replacement for the dented whiteboard in the corner. Apparently, one of the Year 12s had thrown his laptop at it in frustration.

"Uh, excuse me, I'm supposed to have an English lesson in here right now." Courtney said, standing in the doorway.

"I was wondering when you would all start turning up." The sixth former turned around and smiled at Courtney. She was about the same height as Courtney and looked like she'd just fallen out of a Topshop advert. Courtney never did understand what was so exciting about A-Levels that rendered school uniform apparently unnecessary. "Do you know what time the lesson is supposed to start? I'm sorry, I haven't got my head around the timetable yet." The sixth former smiled to herself.

"Afternoon lessons start at two thirty ish." Courtney said, still confused as to why a sixth former didn't know her own timetable yet after doing the same thing week in, week out for almost two months.

"You're a bit early then." The sixth former said, glancing at the clock. Courtney looked up. 2:24 PM.

"What can I say? I'm super keen." Courtney said, giving the sixth former her best 'I'm a Year Seven and I'm excited to learn about the Tudors for the fifteenth time' look.

"Fancy sitting at the front then?" The sixth former smiled at her and nodded at the front centre desk.

"Fuck that." Courtney muttered as she dragged her feet to the seat furthest from the glass/whiteboard.

The sixth former sat down in her chair. "I'm not deaf, you know." She said. Her sing-song voice was beginning to get on Courtney's nerves and she'd only known her two minutes.

Courtney shrugged. "Sorry." She really wasn't in the mood for prefects who thought they were better than everyone else.

"Don't apologise. Just try not to limit yourself to such uninteresting language." She said, typing on the keyboard of the truly ancient computer in the corner.

Courtney had nothing to say in reply to such a pretentious statement, so she slumped down into her chair and pulled out her phone. Twitter was dead and everyone on Tumblr was reblogging the same three photos of Benedict Cumberbatch's face. Typical. She shoved her phone back in her pocket just as the bell rang.

Within a minute or so, the classroom was full of very tired, very unenthused Year 9s who wanted nothing more than to go home so they could sit around and complain there instead.

"Oi oi." TJ slammed her bag down on the desk next to Courtney's.

"Afternoon." Courtney said, shoving TJ's bag onto the floor before TJ could even consider filling Courtney's desk with all of her stuff.

"I thought you'd given up on school." TJ said, sitting down and pulling out a battered exercise book and a single pen that had been chewed to the point that calling it a pen anymore was tenuous at best.

Courtney shrugged. "Got bored."

"You got bored of not being in school? Courtney, you're such a fucking weirdo." TJ said, laughing and shoving Courtney in the arm.

The sixth former coughed purposefully and stood up. "Afternoon everyone, I'm Miss Oswald and I'm here to replace your previous English teacher and his, er, successors. Now, I thought we'd start with a bit of an ice breaker…"

Okay, so maybe she wasn't a sixth former.


	2. Go On Then Do It

Miss Oswald smiled serenely and glanced around the classroom as everyone groaned in unison at the idea of another goddamn ice breaker. Courtney could have sworn that Miss Oswald's smile turned into a smirk when she looked at Courtney.

"I'm sure you've done about a million ice breakers in school and other activities, so I thought I'd just get you all to pick a book off the board that you've never heard of and write a summary of what you think the plot could be. Then we're going to swap them around and you guys can guess who wrote what." Miss Oswald said, looking at her own neat handwriting on the board.

Courtney squinted at the board. Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina. All of them were what English teachers liked to call 'classics', which seemed to mean 'a bit shit, but they were written by dead people therefore we like them regardless of quality'. There were quite a few that Courtney had never heard of: Just-So Stories, David Copperfield, Mansfield Park, but there weren't any that Courtney felt particularly interested in.

"Miss, I can't see the board!" TJ yelled, waving her hand in the air.

"Well, there's a spare desk right up at the front just for you…" Miss Oswald looked down at a list in front of her, "Tabitha, is it?" She indicated at the desk next to Jason's, right at the front. Jason grinned at TJ, in the same way a lion grins at a wounded zebra.

"She prefers TJ." Courtney explained, as TJ shoved her stuff into her bag and dragged her feet towards the front. TJ liked to think she was some great anarchist, but like most of the girls in Courtney's year, it was all hot air and very little action. She'd yell and kick and cry as much as she wanted but she never actually did anything harmful, just incredibly annoying.

"TJ. Okay." Miss Oswald noted down the new information on her list, still beaming. The smiling was beginning to freak Courtney out. No one could smile for that long, especially not teaching Year 9.

"Is that better, TJ?" Miss Oswald asked, as she passed TJ a huge stack of paper to pass around.

"S'pose so." TJ said, dropping the stack on the desk next to her, with a thunk. Jason Stevens took a sheet of paper and shoved it across.

"Good." Miss Oswald sat back at her desk. "When you get some paper, you can start. I'll give you about five minutes. It should be more than enough."

Courtney waited in silence as the paper was pushed around the classroom. Usually, she'd start to talk at this point, but TJ was stranded on the other side of the classroom because she was a prat, and the rest of Set B actually enjoyed English lessons so Courtney was left with no one to complain at.

"Miss Oswald, what if we've read them all?" Courtney asked, as Eloise Staunchfield passed her the few remaining sheets of paper. "Ta." She muttered.

" _Have_ you read them all?" Miss Oswald asked, raising an eyebrow.

Courtney thought for a moment. Lying would make her look like a swot, so she'd end up having to do more work in the long run, but telling the truth would be conceding. Ugh. Fuck. "No."

Miss Oswald's smiled at her. "Then I shouldn't worry."

Courtney rolled her eyes. Peppy teachers were the worst.

Courtney stared at the blank page in front of her and then up at the board. She looked at the book name at the top of the third row. _Persuasion_. Good enough.

After five minutes of crossings-out and pen-chewing, Courtney had something resembling an idea on the sheet in front of her.

Miss Oswald called time and collected all the sheets, once everyone had folded them in half to avoid cheating. Apparently, Miss Oswald thought people would want to cheat on an ice breaker. Clearly, she was deranged.

Miss Oswald read out each plot synopsis, asked everyone to guess the book and then who'd written it, with the extra rule that once someone suggested you'd written the summary, you weren't allowed to talk. Courtney could tell the entire exercise had some ulterior motive, but she didn't know what, so she sat in silence for the first couple of turns. And then Jason said that TJ was the one who'd written about The Magician's Nephew, because really, who else in the class wouldn't know that it was part of the Chronicles of Narnia if it wasn't TJ? Basically, he just thought TJ was too thick to be in Set B. This didn't bother TJ at all, in fact, she probably believed it herself, but Courtney wasn't going to sit around and let Jason bloody Stevens use a dumbass ice breaker to attack TJ.

"You shut your mouth!" She snapped, causing the whole room to look at her. They really should have been used to her stupidly short temper by now. "You just think you're better than her!"

Miss Oswald looked at Courtney. "If we could maintain a sense of decorum–"

"Go on, say it! You're just a stuck up little fuckface, with his head so far up his own arse, you're practically performing a colonoscopy."

"Courtney!" Miss Oswald looked at Courtney, shock in every line of her face. Oh, she was new to this. That explained a whole bunch.

"What did you call me?" Jason asked, standing up and puffing himself up to his full height.

"I said you're a–" Courtney was cut off by a ball of paper hitting her in the face.

"What the hell was that for?" She asked, pushing her chair backwards and jumping to her feet.

The boy who'd thrown it, one of Jason's idiot mates, shrugged at her, a mischievous grin playing across his face.

"I am going to kill you!" Courtney lunged forward, pushing her desk aside.

"Courtney Woods! Stay where you are!" Miss Oswald said, with what Courtney assumed was supposed to be a stern voice. Unfortunately for Miss Oswald, her voice was shaky and uncertain and basically asking the class to take advantage of her newness. Courtney almost felt sorry for her.

"Fine." She said, shrugging.

As Miss Oswald began to relax, Courtney grabbed a piece of paper, screwed it up into a ball, and launched it at Jason. Hitting him at all was a fluke, hitting him in the face was some kind of early Christmas miracle.

"Courtney! Jason! Outside, now!" Miss Oswald snapped, her voice and hands shaking. Jason ignored Miss Oswald and threw Courtney's own paper ball back at her.

And, as Courtney would tell her friends later that day, that was when all hell broke loose. Miss Oswald lost any sense of control over 9B, as the entire situation devolved into catapulting paper and insults.

Within about thirty seconds, everyone had forgotten why they were hurling scrunched up balls of terrible quality paper at each other, and were now just doing it because there was literally no way Miss Oswald was going to be able to stop them.

"Alright, stop!" She yelled, not bothering to hide the desperation in her voice anymore. "Stop! Stop it, all of you, now!"

Jason laughed at her. "It's her first day!"

Miss Oswald's eyes widened. She'd obviously not realised that the entire class knew she'd never done this before. Her eyes darted to the door and then back to the class, like she was considering running out on them. Courtney couldn't wait to see that. Year 9 managed to make a new teacher run out of the room crying in ten minutes flat. Achievement unlocked.

She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't exactly much and took a deep breath. "If you don't stop it, I'm going to have each and every single one of you kicked out of this school!"

Courtney laughed. Seriously, she thought that was enough? She looked her straight in the eyes, making sure Miss Oswald would never forget the face of the girl who well and truly broke her.

"Go on then. Do it."


	3. I Don't Need to Improve

"And how does that make you feel?"

Courtney groaned and flopped back into the old lumpy sofa. "Fan-fucking-tastic, Miss. I don't think I've ever managed to make a teacher lose her shit on her very first day before. It's some kind of personal record." She said, picking at a hangnail that she'd been staring at all day.

"That's not a very nice thing to say, Courtney." Mrs Granger, the school counsellor, leaned forward in her chair, trying to make eye contact with Courtney. Courtney looked straight past her, hoping that literally anyone, even her moronic sweaty science teacher Mr Paulsen, would burst into the room and declare some kind of emergency that would cut the end of their session short.

Courtney shrugged.

"I would have hoped you had little more respect for your teachers." Mrs Granger said, trying to prompt a response.

"Well, I don't." Courtney said, still not looking at Mrs Granger.

"Is there any reason you attacked–"

Courtney sat up. "It wasn't an attack, Miss. I was defending TJ from Jason." There was nothing Courtney hated more than people thinking she started shit when she didn't. It wasn't like she never started shit, she did all the time, but she didn't want to think she'd just start a fight over anything. She had standards.

"Did she need your help?" Mrs Granger asked. She'd obviously not met TJ, because as much as she yelled and swore, TJ found it hard when boys squished spiders instead of releasing them outside.

"Yeah. Jason's a twat." Courtney explained. Jason Stevens liked to think of himself as some kind of school-wide terror and a sexy maverick but there were two problems with this. One: he wasn't the school-wide terror, Courtney was. And two: he was about as sexy as a decomposing goat. Nevertheless, he taken it upon himself to torment the crap out of anyone who disagreed with his self-imposed 'fear-inducing gorgeous lone wolf' status. Apparently, he hadn't got the memo that the whole 'broody angst-machine' thing was kind of over now that everyone had realised Twilight was shit.

"Why would you say that?" Mrs Granger picked up her notepad, in the hopes that Courtney might say something of use.

Tough shit, Mrs Granger.

Courtney shrugged. "Because he is."

"Courtney." Mrs Granger gave Courtney a tired look, trying to elicit some kind of sympathetic response in Courtney.

Courtney sighed. "He said TJ was too dumb to be in our English set." Maybe this way, she could Jason moved down a set. That way he'd have to admit that was he was thick as two short planks and he wouldn't be in Courtney's lessons. Win-fucking-win.

"He actually said that to her?" Mrs Granger looked mildly horrified. Jesus Christ, she expressed an emotion.

Courtney flopped back into her chair. "I may be paraphrasing."

"So Miss Oswald didn't provoke you in any way?" Mrs Granger asked, looking surprisingly upset that Coal Hill students weren't verbally abusing each other.

"No."

"So, I'll try again, is there any reason you attacked Miss Oswald in particular?" Mrs Granger asked.

Courtney thought for a moment. She really hadn't done anything to hurt Miss Oswald, she'd brought that on herself, but as Mrs Granger was thick as fuck and prone to seriously biased tunnel vision, Courtney thought she should probably just entertain her for the moment. "She's short."

"Courtney." Mrs Granger sighed. She should have expected this. Ask a stupid question, and all that.

"What?" Courtney put her hands in mock defence. "I can't help it if I'm heightist. I'm just a product of my environment."

"Courtney, I can't help you if you won't take this seriously." Mrs Granger said, writing something down in the notebook in front of her.

"I don't want your help." Courtney shrugged, not bothering to look Mrs Granger in the eye.

"Courtney–" She began.

"Isn't there that bullshit about only being able to change yourself if you accept you need to change? Well, I'm perfectly fine how I am, so, frankly Miss, you can fuck off." Courtney turned and glared at Mrs Granger. For a moment, Mrs Granger stood her ground. Courtney counted out the seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight… Mrs Granger shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Courtney let out a small smile. One-upping two teachers in two hours was good going, even for her.

Mrs Granger put the notebook down and leant forward, probably trying to level with Courtney or something. "The point of these sessions isn't to force you to change, Courtney, it's to help you realise the areas that you yourself want to improve on."

"But I don't need to improve." Courtney had much more enjoyable ways of spending her time. Assassin's Creed, for a start.

"Well, your grades would say otherwise." Mrs Granger said, nodding at Courtney's half-term review, which was lying on the coffee table.

Courtney glanced at the review. "Mum always says you shouldn't define yourself by a list of letters on a piece of paper."

"I'm not –" Mrs Granger stopped to think. "No, Courtney, you see, I'm not saying you should let them define you, as such, I just think that with a small amount of effort, they could be significantly improved."

"Oh, good to know!" Courtney beamed. As soon as it registered with Mrs Granger and inspired a tiny seed of hope, Courtney dropped the façade. "Not interested."

"Why?" Mrs Granger asked.

Courtney was slightly put off. Mrs Granger always spoke in full sentences, probably in the hopes that Courtney would do the same, so the one word question just sounded weird coming from her. "What?" Courtney said.

"Why aren't you interested in improving your grades?" Mrs Granger explained.

Courtney laughed. Wasn't it obvious? "Because school is bullshit. The teachers like to pretend that they're teaching me stuff for the experience and the knowledge or whatever, but they're just doing it to fill out a requirement or get me through an exam." Courtney took on air of moral superiority. "I refuse to just be a number on a page to make the government happy."

Mrs Granger sat there for a moment, in some kind of shock. Courtney was tempted to ask whether she needed an ambulance or not. What if she'd given her a stroke? She was certainly old enough. "That's quite a well thought-out answer, Courtney." She said, eventually.

Courtney shrugged. "Well, I've got forty minutes of PSHCE a week, I might as well do something with my time."

"Okay, so if you could change anything about the education system, what would you do?" Mrs Granger asked, probably hoping she'd found a topic that Courtney would actually respond to.

"Hang Jamie Oliver from the top of Big Ben." Courtney smirked.

Mrs Granger eyes widened and she leant forward and shuffled the papers on the coffee table between for the thirteenth time in forty five minutes. "I'm sensing today isn't a good day for you, Courtney, maybe we can try this again next week." She said, standing up and gesturing to the door.

Courtney stood up and swung her bag onto her back, heading straight for the door. When she was halfway out the door she turned around and looked at Mrs Granger. "Of course it's not a good day for me, Miss, I've had to sit in your shitty office for an hour." And with that, she left, slamming the door on the way out.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hi! It's occurred to me that's there's a couple of Britishisms in here that people might not get. First, PSHCE stands for Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education, it's basically annoying lessons that most schools have once a week where you get told not to get pregnant and why drinking any alcohol ever will result in a terrible painful death. It's also basically universally hated. And second, Jamie Oliver is probably known outside the UK as a TV chef but he's mostly known to primary and secondary school kids in the UK as the man who ruined school lunches by deciding they had to be 'healthy'.

Thanks for reading! x


	4. You're Not as Intimidating as You Think

English book, check. Pens, check. Homework diary, check. Maths homework, sort of check... ish. Courtney shoved her half-finished page of simultaneous equations into her bag, and grabbed a Galaxy bar from the back of her locker. She slammed her locker shut, pushing the door into the piece of blue tack that she kept stuck to the inside of the frame that kept her locker closed. She didn't have the attention span to keep track of a locker key for a whole year, anyway.

Courtney got the sense someone was watching her, like a prickly feeling in her shoulder. She glanced over her shoulder.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

"The fuck do you want, Jason?" She asked, picking up her bag.

"Wanted to know if you were going to English after this." He asked, an infuriating smirk playing across his lips.

Courtney waited for an explanation. "Why?" She asked, having finally realised that she wasn't getting one.

"Just answer the question." He said, flicking a pen between his fingers in a way he must have thought made him look cool. It didn't.

"You didn't ask me a question, fuckhead." Courtney said, already sick of talking to him.

"Yeah, I did." Jason said, squinting in confusion. Courtney gave him a look and he backed down. "Well, are you going to English now?"

"Yeah. I want to see who they've got in as a last minute replacement for Oswald. Me and TJ have bets." Courtney was kind of hoping it would be one of the terrible subs or, even better, a reincarnated/zombie Dr Black. "Why?"

"Thought I could walk with you." Jason said, with a small smile.

Courtney knew better than to trust that smile, she'd seen Jason throw it at teachers, friends, girls he was creeping on and it never ended well for anyone, well, except Jason of course. Courtney felt sick just looking at it.

"What?" Courtney laughed. "Oh, you've got to be fucking with me. Is this is your fucked-up way of apologising for yesterday? Because if so, frankly, you can fuck the fuck off." Somewhere, her Head of Year was losing her mind. She just had a way of sensing that Courtney was swearing on school site, even when she couldn't possibly be in earshot.

"I wasn't going to apologise–" Oh, of _course_ he wasn't. He was Jason. Courtney laughed again. Jason stopped. "What?"

"What?" Courtney copied Jason's confused frown.

"You laughed." He explained.

"You just said you weren't going to apologise like it was a good thing." Courtney said, not understanding how Jason couldn't see the irony. "And I know you _think_ you're the greatest thing ever to set foot on this meagre earth, but even literal actual deities have to apologise for being a dick, you pillock."

Jason stood there in silence for a moment, like he was in shock. "I don't think I'm–"

Courtney didn't let him finish. "Oh, so you're just a dick for no reason then? That's cool. No judging, I mean, I am too." Courtney waited for Jason to relax slightly before carrying on. He was a dick, he deserved the mood whiplash. "Just leave me the fuck alone or I'll rip your precious hair off your head."

Jason instinctively went to stroke his hair that Courtney was pretty sure was at least 85% product. "See you in class." He muttered, shuffling away.

"Fuck off, Jason." Courtney spat at him, a glob of saliva landing on the back of his blazer.

Courtney considered going to class. It was only English; it wasn't exactly hard and in the space of ten minutes the day before she'd already built the reputation of the girl the teachers just avoided. Eh, Miss Oswald's replacement wouldn't miss her that much.

Courtney meandered aimlessly through the corridors of Coal Hill, occasionally looking in on all the lessons going on. Apparently, someone had tipped off the office to the fact she (or someone else) wasn't in class, because Mrs Adams was patrolling the corridors with a furious look on her face, meaning Courtney had to hide behind some lockers a couple times. She was pretty sure that the second time, when she ducked behind the block of lockers used by 8S and 9M, she stuck her hand in a blob of fresh chewing gum. Fucking fantastic.

After about ten minutes of just walking around and not really having anything to do, Courtney eventually found herself sitting on the floor in the science department. From her position, she could hear Year Sevens or Eights shrieking in excitement about something. Probably some mundane experiment they'd end up doing a thousand times.

"You and I both know you're supposed to be in English."

Shit.

Courtney looked up to see Mrs Arkwright, her Head of Year, glaring down at her.

Courtney shrugged. "Maybe. I forgot my timetable."

"Well, isn't it good I found you?" Mrs Arkwright said, with mock enthusiasm. "I'll take you back to class, I'm sure Miss Oswald is missing you terribly."

"Didn't she quit?" Courtney asked, hauling herself to her feet.

Mrs Arkwright let out a short laugh. "You're not as intimidating as you think, Courtney."

Courtney rolled her eyes.

Mrs Arkwright walked Courtney to her English classroom and practically pushed Courtney through the door. "Courtney Woods for you, Miss Oswald."

Miss Oswald looked over at Courtney and smiled, apparently genuinely.

"I'm glad to see you found the time to grace us with your presence." She said, barely missing a beat.

What? Where was Miss scaredy-cat 'I've clearly never done this before' Oswald? Maybe it had been a ploy of some kind. Ugh. Fuck this. Now, Courtney was going to actually do some work. "I was just explaining to everyone who _bothered_ to turn up on time what the schedule for this term is going to look like."

Oh, jeez.

Miss Oswald continued, "Now, since you've basically missed half a term's teaching it's going to be pretty full on to get you guys in a state where you're GCSE ready by July. I'm hoping I can count on you to do some reading outside of class as part of your homework, so that we can spend lessons discussing the texts rather than just reading them out."

Courtney dropped into the nearest seat and stuck her hand in the air. "Yes?" Miss Oswald looked at her expectantly.

"What books are we doing?" She asked, pulling out her English book and pen.

"Well, I thought we could start off the year with a bit of Macbeth." Miss Oswald smiled brightly, like what she had had anything close to a positive effect on the class.

"Isn't that a play?" Courtney asked.

"Yes."

"So it's not a book."

"No."

"So, why are we studying it?"

Miss Oswald pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Courtney thought that now would have been a good time to remind her that she had chosen to be here; Courtney hadn't. "Because literature encompasses all forms of written work."

"What, even like Facebook statuses?" TJ asked.

Miss Oswald thought for a moment. "Yes."

"What about tweets?" Someone called out. Eloise perhaps?

She nodded. "Definitely."

"What about subtweets?"

Miss Oswald frowned slightly, scrunching up her nose. "What about what?"

"Subtweets." TJ said. She thought for a moment. "It's, like, when you tweet about someone but you don't say who it's about but everyone knows but no one says anything, 'cause no one wants to say that that shiii–" TJ trailed off, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't get her a warning, "bad thing that person wrote was about them 'cause then you're, like, throwing shade at yourself?"

Miss Oswald shrugged. "I don't see why a subtweet can't be literature."

"But how's a tweet literature? It's so short." Jason said, still fiddling with his pen. Courtney was ready to shove it down his throat.

"Well, the length of the–" Miss Oswald noticed Eloise apparently plotting Jason's murder from the far corner. "Yeah, go ahead, Eloise."

Eloise smiled that stupid smug smile of hers and took a deep breath. Courtney rolled her eyes. Holy crap, here we go.

"Okay, so like in a tweet, you're constricted by a certain number of characters? And there's loads of types of poetry that do the same kind of thing, just with like lines or syllables or whatever. And it means people can write really inspiring stuff but they are so restricted that the art is in like conveying a message actually worth reading in less than 140 characters. So, yeah it's definitely literature." Eloise smiled at her own apparent intelligence.

"Uh, surely literature has to say something meaningful?" Jason said, making sure to remind everyone that he thought he was the cleverest person in the room, including Miss Oswald. "And like most people just tweet their food or pictures of their cat or whatever. So it's not literature because it's just mindless and boring and literature is about preserving and understanding culture."

Eloise laughed. "But if literature is just preserving culture, then Twitter is, like, the epitome of literature. Because it's literally like a live thought stream of hundreds of millions of people, who literally are their own culture. Because that's what culture is."

Miss Oswald smiled that stupidly serene smile of hers. "Well, this certainly wasn't the direction I expected this lesson to take. If you two could just hold those thoughts whilst I give a quick rundown of what we're doing this term, I'm sure we'll return to this at some point."

Eloise huffed to herself and folded her arms. Jason, apparently, still had yet to process the complex noises coming out of Miss Oswald's face hole and carried on blathering. "Are you seriously telling me Twitter is more literary than–"

"Jason." Miss Oswald's smile didn't drop. Jason finally got the message and leaned back in his seat. "Right, so this term, we're going to be studying Macbeth, which will probably be the first Shakespeare you've studied, am I right?" The whole class nodded and murmured some generally positive-sounding grunts. "Good, okay. Right, so I'm just going to hand round some copies of the text. Now, these are yours to keep, so draw on them and highlight and annotate as much as you want, alright? Just keep your doodles to the margins." Miss Oswald picked up half the giant stack of books off the floor next to her desk. The whole tower was almost taller than she was. Not that that was saying much.

She walked around handing out books and generally being sickeningly nice to everyone, making Courtney want to puke.

"Miss Oswald?" TJ called out.

"Yes, TJ?" She answered, offering Eloise a book. She took it off her far too enthusiastically to be reasonable.

TJ held up the book, open on one random page, looking at it like it had killed a person. "How are we supposed to understand any of this? It's not even English."

Miss Oswald laughed slightly. "I know it might not look like it, but I promise you it is actually English. And don't worry, we'll be going through it together anyway. Shakespeare always looks like it's going to be much harder than it is."

Miss Oswald offered Courtney a copy. She looked at it and looked up at Miss Oswald and then back at the book and then back at Miss Oswald. Eventually, Miss Oswald gave in and just placed it on her desk. She turned to address the entire classs. "Okay, so once you've got a copy, write your name in the front so we can return them if you lose them. Has anyone ever seen Macbeth before?" Nobody spoke. TJ looked knowingly at Courtney. She glared back. Courtney wasn't about to say yes, even if it was true. "Okay, interesting. Do any of you know anything about Macbeth?"

One of the drama kids, Jay, put his hand up. Miss Oswald smiled at him encouragingly. "You can't say its name in a theatre." He said, confidently.

"Yeah." If Miss Oswald smiled anymore, her cheeks would probably crack.

"There are witches." Somebody else suggested.

"Isn't he, like, King of Scotland?"

"Loads of people die."

"He was married to Lady Macbeth?"

Miss Oswald nodded. "Anything else?"

"The trees walk up a hill?" A small ginger boy with giant glasses said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

The whole class took a moment and then began to snigger.

Miss Oswald did her best to glare everyone into submission but owing to the fact that the first word that came to mind when you looked at her was 'adorable' or 'tiny', it had almost no effect. "Sorry, could you repeat that, uh, Max?" She asked, quickly checking Max's name on the list on her desk.

"Yeah, there's, like, a bit where the forest moves, I think." He muttered, suddenly absolutely shit-scared that anyone was paying attention to him. Despite his flaming red hair, people did their best to forget his entire existence. Courtney didn't feel sorry for him, it wasn't like everyone else told him to be a nerd.

"Did you say the trees walk up a hill?" Jason asked, twisting in his chair to look at Max.

"Yeah…" Max laughed nervously. "I mean, maybe not."

"Dude, this isn't one of your weird anime things. Shakespeare's stuff is about the real world. " He said, smugly. What. A. Fucktard.

"Well, I don't want to spoil anything for any of you, but I really wouldn't be so certain, Jason." Miss Oswald said, with something that might have been a smirk, were it not for the fact that she was a teacher, and had had to sacrifice her human emotions when she got her teaching qualification.

"Wha?" Jason mumbled.

"Macbeth's got witches in it, dipshit." Eloise said, rolling her eyes. It must have been a terrible affliction, being so intelligent.

"We can have a discussion without being rude, Eloise." Miss Oswald said, tutting slightly.

"Sorry." Eloise muttered, glaring at Jason. Jason and Eloise had been snapping at each other since Year Seven and Courtney was in no way prepared to deal with it for a whole year.

Miss Oswald grabbed a beaten up copy of Macbeth, full of post-its and folded up wads of paper, and opened it to the first page. "If you all want to open your books to the first scene, I thought we could have a little read-through of the first scene? Any volunteers for the witches?"

The back row of girls, who were perpetually upset that cheerleading wasn't something that people outside of the US actually pursued full time, even in school, put their hands up straight away.

Courtney couldn't help but smile at the image of the three witches from Macbeth as three bitchy cheerleaders, who were more concerned about their manicures than predicting the future. It was kind of perfect in a weird sort of way.

Now that Courtney had made an intellectual insight this lesson, albeit only in her head, she decided she was done for the lesson. The last twenty minutes before was the perfect time for a nap. Courtney yawned and put her head down on the desk, trying to get some shut-eye whilst the Mean Girls attempted to butcher Shakespeare.

Ugh. _Teenagers._

* * *

 **A/N:** I exist! Sorry for the stupidly long wait. I've been dealing with stuff, but now I'm back! Hopefully!


	5. That Bad, Huh?

Courtney ran down the corridor, looking over her shoulder. Hopefully, Mrs Granger had taken the hint and wasn't planning on chasing her down to get Courtney's two week plan in writing. Since all Courtney wanted to do for the next two weeks was maybe eating some pizza and trying out that new Thai takeout down the road, she'd decided to scram rather than explain that 90% of her life revolved around take out food. Courtney checked the time on her phone. 3.53 PM. If she was quick, she could probably make it to the front of school for the 3.55 bus. Headphones in and blaring obscure music, she marched down the corridor, daring anyone to get in her way.

Courtney rounded the corner, scaring a couple of Year Sevens enough to make them practically leap out of the way when they saw her. Courtney smirked. It was nice to know some people respected her.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of the idiot who walked out of a classroom and straight into her, flinging boiling hot tea and exercise books everywhere. Moron. Courtney glanced down to see who it was.

Miss Oswald. Go figure.

Safe in the knowledge it wasn't a teacher who intimidated her in the slightest, she mumbled a quick insincere apology and stepped over the mug that was rolling across the floor.

"And where do you think you're going, Courtney?" The voice of her Head of Year, Mrs Arkwright, boomed through the corridor in a way no human's voice should have been able to.

Courtney turned around and looked at Mrs Arkwright, who glared straight back. It was like looking at a beaten-up male rugby player with aggression issues, if said rugby player was also wearing a skirt and heels. "Home, Mrs Arkwright." Courtney shouted over the noise from her headphones.

Mrs Arkwright looked down at Miss Oswald, as she scrambled to pick up all her exercise books before they got soaked with tea. "I think you'll find you're coming back over here to help Miss Oswald pick up her exercise books." She said.

Courtney looked at her in disbelief. "I think you'll find I'm not." She had better things to do than help out a teacher, and a pathetic one at that.

Miss Oswald looked up from her pile of books. "Honestly, Mrs Arkwright, I'm fine–"

Now that Mrs Arkwright was temporarily distracted, Courtney turned back around and headed for the door.

Mrs Arkwright, true to fashion, completely ignored everyone else's opinions and carried on regardless. "Courtney!" She snapped.

"What!" Courtney yelled back, still facing the other way.

"Headphones, Courtney." She said.

Courtney sighed and yanked her headphones off her head, leaving them around her neck, still blasting music.

"You have a choice." Mrs Arkwright said, which almost certainly meant that Courtney was about to be presented with two shitty options and be forced to take the slightly less shit one, which would inevitably be helping out her pathetic (almost-ex-)English teacher. "You either come here and help Miss Oswald with her books, or you can come back and write her an apology note on Saturday morning."

Fuck.

Mrs Arkwright was well aware that Courtney spent all her Saturday mornings visiting her ill grandmother, partially because her mother told her she had to if she wanted an allowance and partially because her grandmother was one of the few people who actually listened to Courtney. Saturday mornings were off the cards, permanently.

Courtney turned back around. "I've got a bus to catch, Miss." She said, hoping to tap into any semblance of humanity or pity left in Mrs Arkwright's blackened soul.

"You can get the next one. The offer still stands. Help Miss Oswald now, write her a letter of apology on Saturday. Those are your options." Mrs Arkwright folded her arms at Courtney.

Courtney sighed dramatically. "Miss, you don't get it, my mum'll be so fucking pissed–"

"Language, Courtney!" Mrs Arkwright snapped.

Courtney didn't miss a beat. "–if I get back late."

Mrs Arkwright looked at Courtney, not impressed in the slightest. It had been a bit of a far-fetched plan, if Courtney was going to be honest. "I'll write her a note. Now, can you come and do as you were asked?"

"Fine." Courtney dumped her bag on the ground, a safe distance from the tea, which was rapidly advancing across the hardwood.

"Thank you, Courtney." Mrs Arkwright smiled. "I have paperwork to sort, but if I find out from Miss Oswald that you did anything but stay and help her until the entire mess was cleared up, you will be here on Saturday. Do you understand?"

"Yup." Courtney said, kneeling down next to the mess of paper and tea.

"Pardon?" Mrs Arkwright asked, looking down at Courtney.

"Yup, _Miss_." Courtney said, glancing up at Mrs Arkwright.

"Thank you." Mrs Arkwright rose up off the floor and teleported back to her office, accompanied by a loud electronic screech. Or at least, that's what Courtney _assumed_ happened, she wasn't really paying attention.

Courtney looked at the mess, not exactly sure where to start. "If you could just pile the papers as far away from the tea, that'd be great." Miss Oswald said, pointing to the stack she'd already made off to the side of the mess.

"Sure." Courtney said, grabbing the pieces of paper nearest her and shoving them into the beginnings of a pile away from the ever-expanding puddle of tea.

For a moment or two, the only noise in the corridor was the shuffling of paper and the almost inaudible music coming from Courtney's headphones.

Miss Oswald checked the time on her watch. "I'm surprised to see you around school so late. I would have thought you'd be first out the door at half three." She said, still managing to sound cheerful even though Courtney was doing a pretty great job of making her first well and truly suck.

"I got cornered by my counsellor." Courtney said, debating with herself whether wringing out a piece of paper would make the tea situation better or worse.

Miss Oswald stopped sorting books and looked at Courtney. "Counsellor?" Courtney wasn't entirely sure how someone who she'd humiliated no less than two days ago could possibly feel any concern for her at all.

Courtney nodded, passing Miss Oswald a stack of mostly dry books. "Yeah. Arky and Mr C think I'm insane."

Miss Oswald smiled nervously. "I'm sure they don't–"

"Well, either that or they think making me talk to Mrs Granger is going to make me less likely to punch something." Courtney said, faking a bright and happy smile. For a moment, she thought she saw a grin flicker across Miss Oswald's face.

"Which isn't what's happening?" She asked.

"Well, I've got weak wrists so I'm no good for punching things anyway, but an hour with Mrs Granger does make you think it's worth the pain." Courtney said, smiling at her own joke.

"That bad, huh?" Miss Oswald asked, looking like she wanted to smile but couldn't. Either that or she was just really constipated.

"Oh yeah. She's almost as incompetent as she is patronising." Courtney said, finally grabbing the now-empty mug and standing it upright.

"Bad counsellors are the worst." Miss Oswald said, although Courtney wasn't entirely sure it was actually directed at her. It was more just a general statement that Courtney felt inclined to agree with, even if she thought it was odd that a teacher could have the right life experience to be able to have that kind of opinion.

"Yeah." Courtney nodded.

Miss Oswald grabbed the last couple of sheets of paper from the floor and added them to the pile. She stood up and brushed her dress down. Somehow, the quaint English country village girl image hadn't been ruined by kneeling in a puddle of tea and chewing gum for five minutes. "Thanks for your help, Courtney, I hope I haven't made you late for your bus."

Courtney checked the time again. "It just left."

"Is there another one soon?" Miss Oswald asked, the look of genuine concern from earlier making a reappearance. It was disconcerting. By all accounts, Miss Oswald should have already hated Courtney, but she didn't and Courtney wasn't entirely sure what to do with the information.

"Ten minutes." Courtney said, standing up and grabbing her bag.

"Okay, get home safe." Miss Oswald smiled. Again. Very weird.

"Thanks, Miss." Courtney tried to smile back, but she was pretty sure she just contorted her face into a shape only vaguely resembling a smile before dashing off to get her bus.


End file.
